20 Acquisitions: Started with One Employee - now 100+ E:51 Top M&A Entrepreneurs Marshall Doyle

Welcome to the top M&A entrepreneurs. My guest today is Marshall Doyle. Marshall Doyle is actually a student of Epic, the Rollins Group. Uh, he's done about 20 deals. He's run a company. He runs a company called CalSer, who's also in the Air Force, which I was too. So, uh, welcome to the show, Marshall. How are you? Awesome. Welcome, John. Thanks for having me. Uh, looking forward to our chat. Yeah, so I Let's go back. How did you start? I mean, where was the very first acquisition and was it before Epic or Epic it was the inspiration? Yeah, I know, it was long before Epic. In fact, I was, as when I met Roland, uh, met him at a speaking event in San Diego, and um he described his process, and I thought, hmm, I've been doing that. Um not really on that extent, but uh back in '98. Uh, that's 1998 for young people. Um, we, we, uh, I, I bought my first company I bought Cal Cert, and, uh, Cert was a one-person company, one employee company with two owners. And, um, they, uh, they want to retire. And, uh, friend of a friend of friend, kind of a connection, and I did some calibration in the Air Force, and so I was introduced. Uh, we put a deal together in uh June of '99. I bought the company from him after working for him for eight months. Um, first one, I mortgaged my house for the down payment. Um, and then he carried a note for uh 10 years. So he definitely trusts you and this was off market, right? I mean, it was, yeah, he was, uh, he was, um, he was just a small company. He had actually been larger, uh, had a shareholder dispute with family and all this stuff earlier before me, and, and, uh, the company was kind of Well, in his words, he was gonna bury it before his family member, which was his son, would get it. So yeah, it's pretty ugly, still pretty ugly actually between the two, so, um, but that was my first business, um, and uh I still have that business running, um, and, um, uh, so let me silence my phone there. The um. You know, it was my first, uh, move into the entrepreneur world. I was operations manager in a property management company before that. Um, and I grew that company. We were around 40 employees. When I left 8 years later, we were 140 employees. And, uh, I'd like to think I had a little something to do with that as our operations manager. Um, and, uh, you know, the old carried on the stick was out there, but uh never really was coming to fruition. So, well, what, what was going through your mind? Uh, you know, going from a W-2 to owning it. I mean, what did you want to own your own company, like, put your, put your money where your mouth is, or somebody, I, I've always been, I've always been kind of self-driven, uh, always, you know, I'm one of those guys that can do anything, fix anything, at least somewhat decently. So, um, I've always been one of those guys. Um, I've never really had an aspiration to be a business owner. I grew up very poor. I'm the oldest boy of 9 kids. My dad was in the army, and, uh, and then you were in the Air Force, you know what they pay, right? So, um, yeah, I got laughed at one time when I showed my check to somebody. Right, yeah, exactly. So, um, but, um, the job I was at, I was doing really well. I was paying paid pretty well, but it was a pressure cooker. It was terrible. And the thing I didn't like about it is that although I was responsible for everything, I wasn't empowered to make decisions on everything. And so I think that's what I was really looking for. Um, and, um, I was in this pressure cooker, so anything looked good to me back then, so, um, so I left and, um, and I remember, um, my wife and I talking about, you know, what we needed to do to prepare for this, and so. Um, I got a 2nd mortgage on my house. We sold my wife's car to get out from the car payment, bought her this piece of junk, little Chevy Cor good for cash, and just got ourselves prepared, you know, for that entrepreneurial world, knowing that we would probably need to put more money into the company. Yeah. Yeah. And so, um, but I was excited about being in control. How integral was your wife in the decision making? I mean, you said, hey, I want to buy this business, obviously she didn't go, you, you're crazy, that's not happening. No, actually she didn't. Funny, funny you mentioned that uh. Yeah, my wife's an accountant, um, and that's, isn't it? Yeah, she worked for the same company as their accounting manager, and, uh, so she stayed there while after I left and I gave him like I don't know 6 or 8 weeks' notice just to, you know, you know, help them out and um. And when we looked at the deal, um, In the midst of all of this, it was kind of a verbal deal come to work for me, and then we'll, you can buy it a year from now. These are the terms, this is what we'll do. It's kind of a handshake deal. And we're 4 or 5 months in and he had got an offer from one of our customers to buy it. And he said, you're gonna have to buy it from Marshall. I have a deal with Marshall, which is, which is awesome, right? He's honorable. Yeah, let me ask you about that. How grateful do you feel knowing you got involved with somebody like that, that honored that. You know, I still get a little tingly inside from that a little bit. I mean, just saying it because, you know, the guy was a man of his word and uh and I still am friends with him today. He's 85 years old, so and uh lives in Deming, New Mexico, so. Um, and so, you know, he said, hey, if you want to buy it, you're gonna have to buy it from Marshall. This is like a $400 million company that wanted to buy it out. If they could just write the check tomorrow. And so at the time, I was gonna get 25% more than we had agreed to, to buy it for. They were gonna pay me 25% of that more. And pay me a nice salary to run it. And my wife sat across the table, I remember it was at Denny's of all places, but we were sitting at Denny's after we met with our attorney. And I'm like, what do you think about this? And I said this, I got this job offer or they want to buy the company, I can run it. She said, why did you want to do this to begin with? And I said, well, I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. I want to be my own person and develop something for myself. She said then why would you take this job? Cause it just be another job. And so we did it. A couple with one for the wife of putting what's important. Yeah, it was, it was really cool. She really supported me really well in there. And so, and uh, you know, people think, you know, I'm gonna go into business, I'm gonna be rich or I'm gonna make a lot of money or whatever, but, you know, it doesn't work for most of us, you know, it doesn't work for most people out there and so, um. You know, we went through our struggles. I mean, we went through price wars with competitors, we went through lots of stuff, you know, nearing bankruptcy, nearing divorce, actually. And uh it was pretty ugly in the first few years. By 2001, you know, we were, we were, it was tough and um And, and so that's when I decided that um I needed to do something different cause I had a competitor who um was sucking the prices down in our territory. We were in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Alaska and Hawaii. That was our territory for the most part. And um pricing was going down and down and it was a race to the bottom and um I'm like, how can I get out from underneath this guy? And so I had made friends with uh another calibrator in Minnesota at a at a training conference for a for a manufacturer, and um in 2005 I bought his company. You bought your competitor. But, well, he wasn't really a competitor. It was kind of a territorial thing. We crossed over a little bit in Wyoming, but I, I bought another company outside of the territory of the competitor that was killing me. Oh, so it was like a manufacturer and you were assigned territories, sort of, sort of, yeah, it was kind of a gentleman's territory back then, you know, even though there was really no real contracts, everybody kind of had their own spot, you know. And of course, with, you know, the internet, I mean, 1999, you know, AOL was coming online and internet was coming online, uh, Y2K and so we just started, we just started spreading out and driving further and doing more. And so I bought this second guy out terms deal also. Um, how did that conversation go? I mean, you all at some point you realized. Uh, I can't beat them on price, I can't do them. And then there was somebody said in your head or your wife's again said, well, why not just buy it? Well, we, it wasn't just to be clear, I didn't buy out the competitor. Oh, I bought another guy in a different territory to stand out from underneath this other guy. And, um, and so that's how I got into the Midwest in calibration. And, and it was, and I had gotten to know this guy. We had, um, his name was Bill and we um We had like exchange customer like helped each other out, you know, with that gentleman's agreement like, hey, this is my annual customer but I he's in a jam. Something broke. You gotta have it fixed and calibration is a reoccurring thing almost every year. What kind of machines are they again? Uh, mostly like concrete break machines they use for breaking concrete cylinders for testing concrete strength, asphalt strength, um, and then all the other peripheral equipment there. And so, um, so that, that other acquisition in 2005, we closed that deal, um, and I got one employee, uh, out of it and the husband and wife retired, um, and then we hired another employee in that area and then my office, I think at that time we had grown. We'd grown Cow Search by I think we're at about 12 employees at this point, so we, we were growing, we're broke, but we were growing. Let me ask you about that, uh. How the conversation started, were you putting seeds out there that to the, to the seller, Hey, if you're ever interested in selling, let me know. Did they, did they start it? Yeah. No, um, well, you know, in, in this world, there's factory training, and so the factory guys are about 35 companies in this niche in the US that worked for this one particular factory as vendors or as a warranty guys. And so we went to the training back in Minnesota or Pennsylvania, and you meet, you meet all these people in the training. And, and then you go to the bar afterwards, right? So the bar afterwards and me and another guy, a guy named Lane, who's in Pennsylvania. I was 30 years old, and we're looking around the room and we're like, man, these guys are like old. Like they're like 50 something at least. I'm 55 now, so, you know, they're like, oh, and look at all the gray hair, this industry is gonna bust open. Someone's gonna need to be able to take this over. And so we kind of jokingly said, hey, I'm in Oregon, you're in Pennsylvania, I'll start, I'll start heading east, you start heading west and we'll take over the country. And so that's kind of what the mindset was a little bit and uh you know, almost in a joking way, but, and as I was talking to these guys are like, yeah, I need to hang this up someday or whatever. I'm like, hey, you know, I bought out, I bought out the owner of Cser. Let's talk, and when you're ready to exit, let's talk. And so that's how we, that's how it started. And then and the other guy started doing taking over the that part of his territory with that conversation or? The other guy was growing organically, staying in the territory we were in, um, my main competitor, um, and, uh, I think I, and he still has his company, he's still a competitor. He's got like 15 employees, and in my calation company I have close to 60 employees. Yeah. And so he, and he could have grown just as easily as I did, um. Um, but so in 2005 I got the second one and then in 2007, let me, let me ask you about that, the second one, and, and what kind of deal terms was that again with it, so that that's a good story actually. This one was um. Uh, we did, it's kind of funny. I, I mean, I was really transparent with them, and I said, look guys, you know, I'm, I'm carrying some overhead, and at this point, my wife had joined the company, and my brother had joined the company and not his owners, but, you know, as, as, uh, workers, and of course my wife, you know, they own everything, right? So, but, uh. It's a community property state, right, exactly. So, um, but at this point, you know, I didn't, I didn't have cash. I mean, I was still upside down on, on payables and stuff. I was still, you know, just barely making my profit was starting to get dialed in because I was learning, you know, what I needed to do there. Um, I'd engaged with the small business development centers, SPDC centers, and they were business coaching me and helping me kind of figure out, you know, the operation is 7 years later after your first acquisition. Yeah, exactly. And so, um. So we bought that company. They did 8-year financing, and they financed 100%. And they left $10,000. In the bank for operating. Wow. Why did they take that deal? What, what advantage was it to them? I think, well, number one, the guy was in his 70s, so he was ready, uh, him, his wife, you know, she was a little younger, but they were ready. Uh, and motivated, like Roland was talking about motivated so, right, was, was he not motivated by money, seeing a big number in his checking account or just have the bills paid. He had done well his whole career, yeah. And he'd he'd run pretty lean, so he had done well. Um, his wife was handling the financial part of it. He was like just a calibrator and that's what he did. And so they were, their number one thing they were after was someone to take care of their customers. Oh, I love that. That's what they wanted. They want someone to take care of the customers, and we knew each other for 5 years, and we'd cover each other once in a while, we talk. I talked to his wife constantly. Um, we have what we call windshield time cause we're driving, so I'd call her and we talked for like 2 hours, um, and this is, and she's like, you're gonna buy our cuppy someday. And I said, OK, when I'm ready, and finally they said, look, we're ready, and I said, I'm not ready. Like I I haven't dug out of the hole that I started in, you know. Um, I don't have the cash, but, you know, I could do the cash flow and we can manage, manage the guys. And so we just, we're really transparent with the conversation, really open and honest about the whole scenario, and, uh, and they, they put a deal together that, uh, that I could do. Why do you think your transparency turned into advantage? I mean, you're honest, your ethics is trust. Yeah, we build trust over the years. Did you think they put you through some kind of Ethical test, maybe that you didn't know of, or, or, you know, how you treated your customers. Maybe they called your customers or something, and you know like, how did he do business? Because, well, I don't think they had any like strategic plan for that. I think it just happened naturally. And because we, you know, sometimes would help cover each other's customers, we always had good feedback. And I would always say, hey, you know, you want me to cover this emergency. You want them back next year during the routine calibrations, and sometimes they'd say, yeah, we want them back. Sometimes they, no, it's out of cycle, we can't get there, you can take them. And so we had this real open, honest, integrity-based conversation and and agreement and um and we really became friends and that was a big part of it. And uh it's um and I their motivation was customers. And, and what I found out later, um, is that it's almost always the motivation. Was taking care of the customers and then if they have employees, they want employees taken care of. Yeah, so that that which leads me to the next one that I did, which was in 2007 or 208. Now I can't remember when the disaster of the Great Recession started, but um. It was in the midst of all that. And this guy had sold his company to a different company. They were in due diligence, and they were, they had docks getting developed and everything else, and then the crash happened. Same company type of company. Same, same type of company. These these guys happen to be here in Portland, where I'm at, did a different thing. They did uh temperature calibration, which we kind of did, but not a lot, and he had one employee and then him and his and his wife did their books and stuff. And so, um. They, their deal fell through because of the recession, and he knew one of my employees, and I knew of him, but I never really talked to him. My employee said you should talk to Marshall. And he came to me and said, look, I want to retire. I'm 70 something, like I could taste it. It was so close I could taste it and these guys pulled out. And uh so I got his financials. I got all that stuff, analyzed them, and uh at this point I'm still using the business coach from the SPDC which is an accountant and they're helping me figure it out. um and uh so I came back to him and I said, you know. Um, cause he told me what they were gonna sell it for first, I'm like, I can't. You know, you've lost 40% of your business. Like I can't, I can't buy it for that. Um, he's like, what can you buy it for? And so I told him, and uh he said, I'll take it. And I said it's gotta be terms. And so I gave him 10,000 down. Um, which essentially was designed to pay his attorney's fees from the, the failed deal. Yeah, cause he had to pay his attorney's fees for a failed deal, right? And um and we we use the documents that the other buyer. That these documents. Yeah, we use the same documents, we just adjusted them and used them and changed the pricing. So, um, and then we got one employee with that one, and we had the infrastructure to manage the overhead side of it. Yeah. So that's when we started to scale. So was there any point you're realizing this stuff is starting to happen to me? What's the end game? Because you fast forward. To 2021, 2022, you're talking to Roland goes, the end game is, you know, higher multiple because you're larger. Was there anything that's coming in that was kind of in my head a little bit, um. It was really more about, um, and for me personally, it was really more about getting me off the road. Because I was a technician, and it was threatening my marriage and threatening my relationship with my kids. And so I was trying to grow enough to get enough income that I could be in the office and just do sales and do scheduling and do those kinds of things and not try. And, and so, uh, it was never about money, it's still not about money, honestly, um, and but we, we're able to, you know, build a pretty good portfolio of, of clients, client base, um, and then, um, well. We, you know, the industry changed a little bit. In 1999, they published a document called ISO 17025. It's a quality assurance accreditation. And by 2002, 2003, the state agencies, the federal agencies were starting to require this accreditation. And so I needed to get it in order to move forward, but the other thing that it did is it Companies that we were doing like a concrete machine for, all of a sudden they needed everything else done too. Oh yeah. Like their ovens and their scales and their thermometers and their torque crunches and all that stuff. Yeah, let me, let me, before you jump into that, let me ask you, when you said it's not about money, is there another word that you'd use that it's about? And how do you stop the word money from keep creeping in, you know, how sometimes you're, you're patient, you get impatient by seeing something else. And you have to let that keep those from creeping in like weeds in your garden. Well, I mean, it started out, you know, I wanted to create stability for my family. Yeah. And of course, you know, money does give you some stability, right? So that's freedom, but um reoccurring income gives you stability and money. And so when money gives you a little stability. So, money was really not there. I never really wanted to be rich. Um, and, um, you know, we grew up so poor. I, you know, anything we did, you know, was better, right? So was new territory. Yeah. I mean, my dad was, you know, never graduated high school. Same thing. Yeah, I mean, I barely graduated from high school and, um, you know, I went straight in the Air Force when I was a junior in high school. So, I mean, I, I graduated, but then I went on and late enlistment, but, um. The, the money thing for me is, um, someone told me once, you know, if you focus on money, you'll never have it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. on helping people, it's just energy. You have to focus on energy. And now I'm just kind of addicted to the whole game, um, you know, it's, I like the whole game of it, and so most of the companies that I bought were small 12 person companies that could blend right into cower. Right. If you're just basically buying maybe an employee and a customer list. Yeah, some equipment, an employee or two. You know, customer list, you know, I was always looking for like, you know, maybe they've got like some service that's so proprietary we can, you know, own that market or higher profit or some software that's gonna make everything, you know, way more profitable or or something like that. And so, so I've always, always just continually looking for improvement, improvement, improvement, improvement, and And um and although we still acquire smaller companies as part of our strategy, you know, we acquire bigger companies now too. And, and so, but all of them I'm doing, I'm doing what I now I've learned, you know, Roland, of course, Roland's program is really kinda on steroids compared to what I was doing, but um. It's, I was doing the same thing. I was like just being transparent and look, I don't have the cash for this, but I can pay your payments because I can do the cash flow of it. Yeah. So I was using it as marketing and so. So we grew the company in 2 by 2009, we had done 3 acquisitions and we grew the company by about 65%. Yeah, and what, what was next after that? Uh, let's see, let's, let's kind of jump to where maybe there's an epiphany. I need to buy a bigger company, or I need to go to a different industry, where what what happened there? Well, um, Like most entrepreneurs, I'm ADD or ADHD, right? So, so I was like something new and exciting. And so I was always jumping around to different things, and I think this roll up was giving me that ability to feed that a little bit. And so learning new things for our, for us it was growing the, the territory was, was scaling it, but while we were growing the territory, we were growing the services too. And so we've got like 30 because the Ioha and we started out with like 6 services we've got like 380 some services now um in the calibration business itself um and uh so it's, it's, uh, and we're in 42 states. So I mean we've grown, you know, a little bit. And uh and so and When I, when I, uh, when I met Roland. So I met Roland I guess maybe almost 5 years ago now. Yeah, so this is way before Epic. What was this about? Yeah, it was way before Epic, um, and so I met Roland, yeah, in 2005. He spoke at an event with Alison Maslin. I don't know if you've heard of Alison Maslin. It's a Pinnacle Global Network is the name of her company. Um, she's out of San Diego and uh she's a, she's a coaching group. It's a coaching, uh, group. Um, coaching, masterminding, you know, that kind of stuff, and, um, and so I was at one of her events. I that I had, you know, become a member of one of her coaching groups and um was at an event when he spoke and I'm like I gotta talk to the guy. This is what I'm doing. And so, and one of the things when you go to events, you probably go to some events before COVID. One of the things I always did is I always watched the speakers, how they entered the stage and how they exit the stage. So once I figured that out, I'd always sit where they were exiting. So that if they were a great speaker, I'd get a chance to exchange cards or meet with them or something. And so I did that with Roland. He was, he was up there, and I'd read a little bit about him, but that was my introduction to him. And I sat over to the left side of the stage, which is where she was having everybody go down. And, um, when he came out, of course, you know, speakers over and they're going to break, right? And so, he comes down and I, I like stopped him and I said, I need to talk to you. And he's like, what's up? I said, I've been doing what you're doing on a much smaller scale, and I want to learn more from you. How do I do that? And because these events they they won't let them sell anything, and he wasn't doing it big then. He wasn't doing any of that stuff. And so, and then we exchanged a couple of emails and then Kind of nothing for a while, um, and then of course I was following his podcast, um, Business lunch, yep, business lunch 330 something. Yeah, and so, anyway, so I kind of got to know him and not know him, but know of him and all that, and then he started Epic during the pandemic and by this time in Epic, um, I'd already bought. 14 companies. These are all just the kind of the, the normal one, you know, roll up, yeah. But while some were small, some were big, biggest one I ever bought was a 14 employee company. Um, before I met Roland. And did you, let me ask you about that. Did you have a set checklist or system of what happens when you acquire now after your 14th days this needs to happen. Yeah, I've got, it's, it's loose cause I'm kind of a visionary guy, you know, so it's loose, um, and everything has the basics that you need, so I have that down, um, but the, uh, You know, the fine tuning of it, I just, yeah, I just have the mind for it. So let's go through it. I'm, we're just, I just signed papers on Friday for another acquisition. Yeah, how big was that? How many people in revenue, uh, that was a $1.3 million dollar acquisition. Um, and we, we acquired, I think 4 employees, um, but as a product sales company, so don't know those numbers, they're not huge because it's products, right? So, um, but, um, in your industry, it's, yeah, they're in my industry. They don't do calibration, they're doing instrument sales. But these are instruments that need to be calibrated. And so, and they actually would sub some things to us, and we would buy some instruments from them. And so you're gonna be calibrating the instruments you sell, which should help your product margins, yeah, yeah, and the owner there, two owners, husband and wife, um, the, the husband's a little bit older than the wife. She's the sales engine. she's like the rock star salesperson, and so she's coming on as our sales manager. And we had lost the sales manager just almost a year ago and I stepped back into that role a little bit. Um, we have 5 people on our sales team and um our sales manager took a job as a GM at one of our vendors. Um, no surprise, we still get a lot of sales from him because he's a GM for one of our vendors, but, um, he's not on our salary anymore. So, um, but yeah, when I go through the checklist, you know, I've, I've made a checklist over the years and I actually developed a, um, I developed a process to help um what I call microbusinesses sell. Um, so my daughter and I started a company called Small Business Coaching LLC, um, and, um, that business, this is before the pandemic, and that was designed to, um, help either help like what Roland's doing, but help people buy um businesses like what Roland's doing, but on a much smaller scale. Like, you know, buying like the local barbershop or, you know, things like that, solar perne kind of businesses, um, and because I had bought a lot of those guys out and when I bought them out, they had no clue how to exit or no clue how to set the company up for sale. So I, what do you mean? I'm an independent now I'm a W-2. What's the, you know, what, yeah, I was just, you know, they, they had no idea how to do it, so how to do it. So I set up this this business coaching thing with my daughter. Um, where we coach people on how to buy their first business. And or how to buy existing businesses as a roll up strategy, like for example, a nail salon, right? You buy a nail salon, then instead of like starting a new one on the other side of town, buy another nail salon. And then buy another nail salon. Yeah, and so we kind of had that figured out and started coaching on that and um and then pandemic uh when then we decided, OK, let's help them sell too. Like, let's help these solopreneurs that have 3 or 4 employees maybe wanna sell. So we started that independent of Epic, right? This is, oh yeah, this is before Epic even started, um, and so we were setting this up, my daughter and I, and, um, we were building an online course for it. It was gonna be a hybrid online course kind of done with you kind of a thing. And at this time I was stepping away from Cer a little bit because I have a team that's running it now. You know, I've got a 6 person leadership team, they're running it now. I meet with them once a week for 90 minutes. And so I don't get involved other than the acquisition stuff and um. And so I was bored, right, so I need to do this, um, do this other stuff, but, um, so we started that coaching business and then when, when uh the pandemic hit, um, well, that's no time to sell, right? Um, that's no time to be in a panic and sell, so we didn't really want to coach our clients. That's not a lot a lot of people feel. They first, the first thing they do is, I mean, I gotta get out. Right, exactly, but, but for a strategic seller. That's not the best time to sell, right? And so I didn't want to get people on fire sales and help them fires sell their company. It's not. Did you feel ethically bad about that, or did you? OK. Yeah, I didn't, that's not the right thing to do. I want to see them get top value for the company, so and so, um. It started out with a client we were coaching that had a welder repair company and 5 employees been in business, it was his dad's business before him, been in business since 1956, and he was second generation owner in his 70s. And he was scared of the pandemic. His wife's health was challenging, and so he was scared of the pandemic, and I was coaching him to get his company ready to sell. Um, before the pandemic hit, and then you you charged him or how did that work? Oh yeah, they paid me a monthly fee to coach him and, um, and, uh, I mean, I'm charging I think for that level client, if you did a time thing, I charge about $750 an hour, um, and, uh, but you know, I, most of what I had I already developed, so um we could get a lot of things done in an hour. Yeah, it's just him executing on what's right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And so we're doing price strategies, we're getting his margins right. We're getting his books straight. We're getting his marketing straight, getting all the things you need to look at on a business. Who would want to take over a 2nd generation where the second owner is 70+. Welding repair business. I love repair business because I love the way the beads look and look, look, but finding somebody to step in that role. Well, as it turns out, I would. You did, I bought the company. I did not set you up for that question. Yes, you did. You didn't know you were setting me up, but you did. My daughter's like, why don't we buy it? I'm like, really? Now Caler, we calibrate welders, so we, and we had in the coaching we kind of learned that they, um, you know, we had some shared customers and some other stuff. This guy, he kind of owns the niche in the Portland market and uh part of the reason he owns the niche because it's very difficult to make money doing that because they're rebuilding torches and regulators. Labor is your biggest burden. And then you're fighting, you know. Uh, like knockoff products that are being made overseas for cheaper than it costs to fix the one you have. And so, I mean you don't get the quality you need, but so. We looked at it and said, you know, I think we can spruce this up. Um, he needed to move out of his family home. They were working out of a garage with a grandfathered clause for the county, so he worked there. I, because of the pandemic, my admin staff had moved to their home, and so I had space in my building. So I'm like, OK, we'll buy them out, we'll move them into this space, we'll tear the carpeting out, which turned out to be more expensive than I thought it was gonna be, but I'll tear the carpeting out, expose the concrete floors again. Cause that's curious as she was like, wait a minute, why do they have carpet on a welding place? No, no, this is calibration. I took office. OK. I took industrial space and turned it into office space for Caler. And then when my staff went home, I turned it back into industrial space for the welding company um and I moved them, I so I moved into my building. Um, and then I got introduced to another guy who did the electric welding repair stuff, um, who was somebody we referred to because we didn't do electrical welders, we did gas, what they call gas apparatus. And I met him and uh The owner of the welder company that I bought said he wants to get out. And so I met with him. And he's like, you know, I'm great at fixing welders. I just suck at being in business, and I'm tired of doing this alone. I don't want to do it. I'm like, you want to just close your business down and come to work for us? He's like, yeah. So we did an asset, you know, evaluation of what he had, and he had a lot of customers, a lot of backlog, a lot of equipment, a truck, a couple trucks. Was he profitable? Not really, but partly he wasn't profitable because the system sucked. I mean he just didn't know. He just didn't know how to do it. He was spending money on things, you know, that that not he wasn't being. Irresponsible, but he was just didn't know how to manage the finances of cash flow, and his pricing was too low, his turnarounds were terrible. There was lots of. Yeah, it's a that's the danger of working in the business. You can't see above it where I said, look, I don't work in businesses. In fact, I'm not even, and I I love this from Roland. I'm not on the work chart of any of my businesses. Yeah, I love that. So, and so, um, and I told him that. So I'm not on the work chart, I don't operate within the business. I operate above the business. We figure out the strategies, and, and then you guys execute them. Yeah. And we'll bring in some of my other team to execute them, like my, my executive assistant Sky, who's scheduled with you, um, you know, she, she does a little bit of that execution stuff, process evaluation and those things. My daughter, you know, does that as well. So my daughter's the CEO of the Weller company now. And, um, anyway, we, uh, we exchanged the guy for a little bit of minority share in exchange for his assets, came in, now he's our, he's our service manager. So he got, he got, you know, you evaluated his assets, his assets purchase agreement, and you said, hey, it's worth X amount of dollars. We didn't give you cash for that. We're just gonna exchange it for a percentage of of the surviving company, surviving company, yeah, OK. How much of this, let me, let me go back to this because I had an interview with another guy where, uh, you know, in the age of the internet, everybody wants to do this Zoom call. How much was this face to face negotiation versus over the phone or? With him it was mostly face to face because he's here in in town. Yeah, yeah. So, and uh. Yeah, it was, and honestly it wasn't even that much because, you know, back to what Roland talks about, he was super motivated. Yeah, he didn't want to be out. And then after we took it over, we realized that his cash was imploding on him. And so we did end up feeding it a little bit of cash to get, you know, get some things set up. We had to set up all the electrical systems to um to do the testing in our new in our building. Did you subtract any expenses? Just cut stuff out? We don't need this, we don't need that. Yeah, yeah, we, we, we went through each category and figured it all out and um and he uh we actually took over operating of his entity, which is an LLC. And did the closeout for him. That was part of the deal, like we'll do the close out, cause that's what he was having trouble with. What do you mean close out? So we merged his operations into our existing company. His LLC needs to be no more needs to dissolve, right? So we worked on the dissolution of it. CPA. Yeah, I mean that's not, it's not quite done yet, but they're doing the taxes right now, but we basically balanced out the assets and the liabilities. We balanced out the cash. We did fees back and forth, and we basically got it to his. Tax liability is super low at the end because it was profitable that, you know, that last year. Um, and so we wanted to get his tax burden, you know, lowered. In the meantime, we'd invested a whole bunch to bring him in on the other side, remodeling the building, putting electrical in, so we had some expenses. So we actually dipped into a negative profit for the other company. Um, and, and got him to a 0. let me ask you about that. So, uh, you didn't ask kind of a, uh, an exchange for, uh, your, his assets for his assets. Was there a tax bill for him? Uh, because it's now that, yeah, small tax bill, not much, like like 3000 bucks. Oh yeah, OK, so yeah, it was, and, and my daughter, you know, who also does accounting, you know, she kind of got it all figured out working with our CPA. And get that figured out. So, and the thing is, because we were doing all of that, and we were handling customer interactions, and I wasn't doing any of it, but my daughter and, and my assistant and, and uh our uh accounting team was handling that stuff. He was able to start fixing welders. What do you know? You know, he had 80 welders backlog that needed to be fixed and he couldn't get to because it was too busy. And let me guess, these they were really profitable project. Oh yeah, oh yeah. So, cause he wasn't able to get to that business, and now that was clean from his plate. Yeah, he was dealing with like credit card processing or dealing with like, you know, the, the service software, he's a he is a software called Promax or Something Pro Max, it's like a CRM kind of thing. Promax and um anyway, and so he was too busy doing all this inertial stuff. That he wasn't fixing equipment. It's like, dude, like what, what rings your bell? What rings the bell here, which is bringing in profits, and it's not talking to credit card companies. No, yeah, it's not. So I let we let our team handle that, and he started being profitable. The other thing is he had two employees that were working for him that were dogs. He was letting them get away with murder. He, he was like one of them was his son. And I'm like, look man, we gotta deal with your son. He goes, I know. And I said, it's just not gonna work, and he's like, I know. And um and so the two employees that he had working for him are, they don't work for us. Did you fire them or did he fire them? So you gotta go. Uh, actually my daughter fired him, so one of them quit. Here, I gotta tell you what's going, your daughter came into this picture and she's just a loving this environment you created. Yeah, she's she's a mini me for sure. She's Get this, man. She's 32 years old. She's got 3 babies under the age of 4. She's running 2 businesses. Um, technically 3 businesses, the coaching business, the welding business, and then we, um, she's partners with my son and his business. We own a company called The Nerd Stuff, and it's a computer IT company. Yeah. And, um, we, that the kickoff for that business was a side gig for years with my son. The kickoff for that business was we bought a um a small computer repair store in Springfield, Oregon. Um, as a kickoff they had 4 employees and, um, and so we've grown that. Um, we're looking at 2 acquisitions now to grow that, to expand and bend, and uh somewhere on the coast, um, and well, 3 technically and one in Tacoma, Washington. So, so I'm gonna take the model I did with Cal Cert, we're gonna do it with the IT company and we're gonna do it with the welder company, same model. We're just gonna. Does it, does it make sense? When you, when you look at this and goes, well, what, what do I need to to grow to, to get a higher multiple to some eventual exit or acquisition or whatever it is. Yeah, I mean, Caler's already achieved that. I mean, you know, cows multiple could be, you know, pretty good if I was ready to sell now, but you gotta get it over a million and need it, right? So. And so, um, the other two, you know, they're not there yet, but they'll, they'll get there, you know. And um are you already talking to buyers? Oh yeah, I always have buyers talking to me about Cert. I get calls all the time. So my number one buyer that I identified 15 years ago, it's a publicly owned company. Yeah, that's $400 million. Yeah, no, no, that was a customer. This is, this is a publicly owned company that does calibrations, um, I mean they want to buy us. And I'm like, we're not ready. I, I can't imagine uh uh somebody not a better acquisition target than you are, because how you've grown it and say, hey, look, man, you just saved us all this time and energy and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely some roll up stuff going in at a higher level. The funny thing is this public company. They started their roll up strategy about the same time I started my roll up strategy. Uh, but they did it with funding. I did it organically. Yeah. They're a lot bigger than us. Oh yeah, sure, sure. Well, what's your thought about that now? I mean, use another bit of money. You know, I think um I, I like the game, you know, and um it's, uh, I mean, I got I don't have to worry about money. You know, I, I live the way I want to live. I buy what I want to buy, I do what I wanna do, you know, and, and maybe my palette for that is much different than others would be, you know, I'm not a big money guy, um, you know, I, I have nice cars and I have a nice home. I have a couple homes. You know, we go to Cabo all the time and, you know, been to Europe. You know, I mean I spent a month in Italy with my wife, a month in Australia, or 3 weeks. Did you ever see a I can't drive 55 guy down there in Kabul? I did. Yeah, we went to this bar all the time. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Can I ask you a question about the, your, your management style because, and this is the point of why Roland talks about, um, go and join a mastermind like War Room because Uh, you know, I'll talk to a lot of people about selling their business, and, you know, they took 5 years to build it to $2 million or 10 years to build it to 2 million bucks. And when you're talking about going, hey, we can get you to $4 million or $6 million you know, in 6 months, they go, you know, it breaks their head. What I, how do you, uh, get the skills and acquire the skills to be able to see that, you know, how to work above the business and grow it faster. Do it in 6 months, adding 0. For me, um, You know, I, I had to learn that the vast majority of the limiting factor of a business owner has nothing to do with the mechanics of the business, has everything to do with what's in here. It's it's like looking in the mirror every morning. Exactly. It has everything to do with your mindset, what you think is possible, and then taking the action to make it possible. And the way that I, you know, I've always had a pretty aggressive mindset, but the way that I really got my mindset straight was by getting into high-level coaching stuff, you know, by connecting to guys like Roland. And, and, um, and really watching, listening, reading, everything. I mean, my Audible man, I could scroll here through the rest of your show, and we wouldn't reach all the books that I've listened to, yeah. And how many books, let me ask you a question. I, I buy about 3, sometimes 4 books a month on Amazon. How, how many? Mm. I'm probably like 10 or 1510 or 15. So you just push me to push myself a little bit more. You know, it's, it's whenever anybody recommends a book about something that interests me, while I'm talking to them, I buy it on. You know, I do the same thing. And I have to tell you, Karl Allen, he's been doing this for a while too. He's kind of a competitor Roland, and he's probably worked on 300 deals and very large deals, like 50 billion and stuff. And I actually recommended a book that he's never read before. Really. And he bought it while I'm talking to him, and he showed me the receipt. Yeah. Well, you know, just to swing back for a second on the mindset thing, you know, and getting the, getting, you know, I always said like I surround myself with inspiring people that I can learn from. Like I always wanna be the dumbest person in the room. Yeah, that's who, that's who I wanna hang out with. I wanna hang out with people that I can learn from, and, and I'm a talker. I like to talk, you know, I'm, I'm a outward guy, um, but I had to learn how to listen more. I had to learn how to shut up and listen. And take notes. Is it shut up and listen or ask the right questions? Well, I think it's both, actually. I think it's both, um, but it's, you know, I mean, I've had an opportunity to meet some pretty incredible people, um, with the connections that I've made, um, and, um, it's, you know, I think it's about your network. I think it's about your network, I think it's about the people you hang around with. I think it's about the mindset you're developing. Um, do you know, speaking of books, do you know Gay Hendricks books, The Big Leap? Uh, I've heard of it. It's Hendrix. It's called The Big Leap. He's got a second book out now. I don't remember the name of it, but, uh. If you have someone that's like struggling with mindset, um, he, he has a thing in his book um called The Zone of Genius. And people, people live in there like, um like their what they call their zone of expertise. Or they live in there, I can't remember the other terms, lower down in the tier, but he's got this thing zone of genius concept, and he's a, he's an old-time professor. He's like in his 70s something like that. And he says that most people live in their zone of expertise, like they get really good at something, and they just keep doing that. But they're still doing an awful lot of things that aren't in that zone of genius. They're still doing a lot of this piddly stuff that are auxiliary to what they're doing, and they're not reaching their zone of genius. And your zone of genius is something that you can do without intention to do it. It just happens. You just do it. It's like your mastery. Like, roll the zone of genius is how to structure deals. On company. How to Creatively see that and structure the deals on on how to actually how to approach a seller on what that would look like. Yeah, absolutely, and it's, I mean, and so and so and he probably knows Gay Hendrix, he probably knows of his book and stuff, but um, anyway, that's a book that really helped me um get out of my shell a little bit, not socially but business wise, looking at this and saying, look, I'm this niche business. And I can only grow it so much. Um, and, and that book along with a guy named Stuart Bry, who's an advisor for Pinnacle, um, or mentor, uh, he was, he was my business coach, um, and, um. He said to me, We talked about growing, and he said, how big is big? And I'm like, what do you mean, you know, he's like, do you want to be 100 million? Do you want to be 500 million? Do you want to be a billion? Do you want to go public? Like, what do you want to do? Like, no, I don't want to go to public, cause I don't want to answer to any shareholders. I don't wanna, I don't want to do the work to be that size. Because I don't want to answer to anybody else. I only want to answer to myself. So that's why I'm a self investor, right? I don't have any outside investors. And, and so. I mean, I, I use banks. I just, by the way, I just bought a gay hand drugs sold you. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a good one. It'll help uh you and your listeners, you know, with the mindset that's necessary to get past this, cause I'm telling you, I barely graduated from high school. Um, and I figured this out. Yeah, I, I, I tell everybody this. I said, look, I've done over 50 episodes of this, and the people that have bought over 5 or 10 businesses versus the people that bought 1 or 21 or 2, they talk about tactics and strategy. 10 or more, it's mindset. It's always mindset. So, so I've got the welder company, I've got the calibration company, I've got the coaching company. I have a hotel. I have some real commercial real estate, I have some residential real estate. Um, I have a, uh, well, we're looking at buying a bookkeeping firm right now, um, and the product sales. I've just got my first, uh, e-commerce product business, um, and, um. You know, it's just fun. Yeah, let me ask you, let me ask you about this. Sometimes achieving the big league, taking off to the next step, you have to take your foot off first base, which is subtraction of some things. How are you, how do you see those things that you need to extricate yourself from? Like, maybe it's limiting beliefs, maybe it's a bad habit, uh, maybe it's a routine you have. Well, I think um early on and it still affects me a little bit, is procrastination. Like, you know, you can't procrastinate. Like if you say, hey, like you got friends, right? You run into friends, you haven't seen him in a month, you run them in the grocery store, I'm like, hey, how's it going? It's great seeing you, we should get together sometime. And what do you do? Don't talk to him. You never get together, right? Yeah. So pull out your freaking calendar while you're standing there and go, let's put a date on the calendar right now. So I stopped procrastinating relationship building. And started making it intentional. And I started being connected with more people. There's a guy I was good friends with in high school that I haven't talked to in 30 years, 35, 40 years. I don't know, I've been married 35 years, so, you know, a long time. And he put a really funny post on Facebook the other day. Cause he did some stand up comedian training. And he said, hey, I can share it, but it's inappropriate, so I'll have to share it privately. So I said, yeah, share it. Haven't talked to this guy in years. We're gonna go to dinner next week. Yeah, good. Cause I'm intentional about it. Like, don't just say we should get together sometime. I wanna get on your calendar. Let's let's grab lunch, or let's grab dinner, I'll buy you dinner by lunch. Really enjoyed your comedy. You seem like a fun guy to hang around. You know, let's, let's, let's reconnect. We haven't seen each other since we were 1617 and so procrastination, I think. I think people have a lot of good ideas. I'm one of those people. But if you don't execute on at least some of them, you'll never get anywhere. Yeah, so that was for me one thing. The other thing was You gotta understand your strengths. You gotta understand your weaknesses. And you got to start leaning on people that have strengths in areas you don't. Yeah. And so I've, I've been successful in doing that, building teams. So we have about 10405 employees with all the companies, which isn't huge. I mean, compared to some of your guests, I mean this is peanuts, right? But um. Yeah, it's a life full of, you know, it's a lot of fun, and I'm helping a lot of people. Oh yeah, I don't think there's anybody judging you saying, hey, you need to be, you're not a, I mean, Elon Musk where I need to put Starlinks over the Ukraine. Right, yeah. Yeah, that's cool though, but, uh, you know, but you if you understand who you are, you get into your zone of genius. And you understand that you can help other people by getting them into their zone of genius, and they can help you. Then it works, you know, and so, um, I do a little business coaching through Pinnacle now. I got a handful of clients that I help. Um, I still have, uh, clients with my SB coaching for acquisition stuff where that's kind of firing back up a little bit, although we don't really try, it's mostly referral base. Um, my wife retired last Friday or Friday before last. Well, congratulations to her. We actually asking you the most important question that started last your career. What do you really wanna do? Do you really want to be in a W-2? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's uh my, my goal really was to just, and this is gonna sound kind of funny, but I wanna do what I want when I want with the people that I want for as long as I want to. Yeah, that's it. And so it's uh, I was at a uh you know, he passed away now, but you know Sean Stevenson? Uh, I don't. He was a speaker, uh, speaker trainer. He was, he was born with a deformity and he was in a wheelchair. And he, his bones would break really easy. You might have saw him on Facebook. He put the thing, the sticky notes up. He's one of the first guys that did that kind of stuff. And anyway, it was a phenomenal, um, uh, speaker, trainer, just a phenomenal guy and um. One of the things that he um believed in is that he wanted to rid the world of of um was rid the world of insecurity. And I thought that's really awesome, that he's found such a big vision. For that, and so he started, he ended up doing it through speaker training, teaching people how to speak. Um, so I went to several of his events. In fact, I went to his last event. He died not too long after his last event, so, um. And uh and I thought, OK, I think I need to get in tune with what my vision is. And so, I, I, I established a way of saying what my vision is, which is to help small business owners find joy. Yeah. Now, do you think this was your vision from the beginning and you just took away the marble for a statue of David to reveal it? I think it was my vision for that for myself, for my family. And then it evolved to other families, evolved to other people. I think that's what ended up happening. Yeah. So and how has that affected your time, your people wanting more of your time to learn from you. Um, I have to be pretty guarded with my time. Um, I have to make sure I'm working on the right things, but, uh, I'm connected to a lot of people, uh, and a lot of people are connected to me, um, and I, I like to make sure that no matter what the interaction is, even if it's a small interaction at the gas station with the guy helping your gas, which they still do here in Oregon, you know, um, yeah, only for a much higher price, but, um, my goal is that, you know, if I can make that person's day a little bit brighter. Just by giving them the respect they deserve as a human being. And I do that. Yeah, so, and so, um. You know, I, I just, I'm kind of high on life a little bit, so, love it. I love it, enjoy stuff and all that's too much bother me. And uh but uh it's, yeah, it's just a fun business to be in. Growing businesses is a fun business to be in, you know, obviously there's risk um in doing that, but um it's, um, you know, I, I bought a company in down in Anaheim, it's an industrial vacuum pump, uh, sales and rebuilding company called Ava and um. The owner wanted out. And how did they find you? Was it on market off? They're his best friend is brothers with one of the bookkeepers of a company I bought 5 years ago. OK. Did you follow that? Yeah. So that's the lead. You don't know where these leads come from. That's how I found them. And then he's referred me to another company that wants to sell, um, that is in the gas apparatus stuff down in uh Huntington Beach, I think, and so I'll be meeting with him in a couple weeks just to see what's up with them, but So, you know, but when it comes to acquisitions, I've got 4 to 5 deals going right now, and I, I'm always working on some sort of relationship build or something for somebody, um, and I will feel like I've reached success. I have one particular company I've been wanting to buy for 23 years. 22 years. Yeah, who's that? It's somebody. It's, it's a, it's a good friend of mine that's in the calibration business, um, that I've known for years. I've become really good friends with him, and small companies got 1516 employees, and uh we get together and have coffee or breakfast or whatever, once a month, and he's just not ready to leave. He's in his 70s. And um And I want his company. And and he knows I want his company's, yeah, and so it's and uh some of my team they're like, like. Um, I won't mention his name, but they basically, have you guys had breakfast lately, you know, that kind of stuff. He changed his mind, life changed, yeah, yeah, so it's, um, but if you can help people find their way, you know, so my big, my big big thing is retiring guys and mostly guys, but retiring business owners. That are in the million dollars, $1.5 million.02 million dollars dollar range, gross revenue range. So, you know, their EIA, you know, is likely somewhere around, you know, 5300 to $500,000 somewhere in that range, you know, um, that's kind of my target company size now, um, multiples are, you know, averaging 3, 3.5, you know, and, um, sometimes 4. Um, depending on what they, what they've got, um, and as I roll these three industries up, the, the industrial repair industry, which is we're starting with welders, the computer IT industry, which is the MSP industry, and then of course Gosser, yeah, um. You know, if I can roll them all up, um, cal it's already there, but if I can roll them all up, you know, to be in that um um VC range multiples. Then Yeah, yeah. I mean, why would you want to leave? And I know we're really getting close cause I'm already an hour and I wanna thank you so much for your time. Oh yeah, no problem. So I mean, but, uh, you know, look at Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett. I mean, he's 89, 91, like, still tap dancing to work. Yeah, yeah. Well, we were having my wife's retirement party yesterday, yeah, and uh somebody said, when are you gonna retire and almost everybody in the room said, never. I yelled it out. They know me. And, uh, and I, it's that same thing, right? Just control, you know, what you spend your time on. I'm 55 years old. I still have a lot of energy in me, but I am working on, I'm working on making sure my daughter's locked in, making sure my son's locked in, you know, making sure that, you know, that the, the companies won't suffer if something happens to me. And so I'm confident that if I died tomorrow, which hopefully I don't, right? But if I died tomorrow. Things would still operate. Now, the acquisitions might not be happening as much as they are, but everybody would be in good shape. Yeah, cause you're not really, I mean, you're building a business, but it's not really about building a business, you're building people. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah, and my, my, uh, you know, you talk about vision for a company or mission for a company. My mission for cowser is to provide opportunities for innovative people to thrive and belong. And that's the vision for all the companies. Because if you can help people, And make their life a little better. Then you know, you don't have to have to worry about. So that's right, you know, well, Marshall, I, I, I, I gotta be very respectfully your time because I keep these about an hour long and I want, I, yeah, thank you so much for this hour. I mean this is. Perfect way. To step into the what you were doing and, you know, not close your eyes off of like, what's happening right in front of you. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thank you for the time. I really appreciate it and uh I've been watching your shows. I'm actually, I'm not that far in, but I'm, I'm gonna continue to catch up. So, and I'll keep you so much. So all right, man. Alright, take care. Have a great time. You too. Bye bye.